#4
BBC Monitoring
Russian defence minister says NATO "a Cold War
relic"
Source: Russia TV, Moscow, in Russian 1100 gmt 3 Nov 01
[Presenter] After a meeting in the Kremlin between Russian President Putin and US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov gave journalists some details of the talks. The talks discussed the situation in Afghanistan. In this connection, Ivanov has yet again reiterated that Russian troops will not take part in the antiterrorist operation. In addition, the Russian president and the US defence minister touched upon the ABM Treaty issue. This is how Sergey Ivanov commented on the talks.
[Sergey Ivanov, in Russian] The ABM Treaty is an important but not the only component of strategic stability. We are often told that the ABM Treaty is hopelessly obsolete and that it is a relic of the Cold War.
To some extent - and I would like to emphasize, to some extent - I agree with this.
But it is not only the ABM Treaty, but all major Russian-US or Soviet -US agreements are in some way or another relics of the Cold War.
If we follow this logic, the START-1 Treaty is a typical example of a relic.
The treaty on medium-range missiles concluded at the height of the Cold War between the Warsaw Treaty members and NATO is a complete relic.
If you allow me to express my personal opinion, NATO itself in its current shape is quite a relic of the Cold War. There exists a common mutual understanding between Russia and the USA and today it was confirmed again that we should look to the future together.
Before renouncing any agreement - even though this is the sovereign right of the USA whether to renounce a treaty or not - we believe that it is better to take such steps only when something new has been done to replace the old.
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